BALTIMORE (CNS) — When Msgr. Richard Woy sees Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on television these days flanked by medical experts issuing the latest guidance on the novel coronavirus he doesn’t just see one of the top health officials in the U.S., he sees one of the faithful.

Dr. Robert Redfield, a Catholic who is director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testifies about coronavirus preparedness and response to the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington March 11. (CNS photo/Joshua Roberts, Reuters)

Msgr. Woy, rector of Baltimore’s Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, said when he met Redfield and his wife, Joyce, “they had been active parishioners here for decades.”

As Redfield helps lead the federal response to the growing threat of
coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, his pastor and friends
say his years of work studying viruses along with his deep Catholic
faith will help guide the country through the crisis.

“Dr. Redfield is not shy about his Catholic faith. And I think it does not compromise in any way his work as a scientist,” Msgr. Woy told the Catholic Review, the media outlet of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. “I do not believe he sees any contradiction between the two whatsoever.”

While they are spending most of their time in Atlanta, where the CDC
is based, Msgr. Woy said the Redfields have returned to Baltimore on
weekends and attended Masses at the cathedral in February, serving as
extraordinary ministers of holy Communion.

Although Redfield was unavailable for an interview, he said in a
statement that the faith community will play an important role as the
pandemic continues.

“I have witnessed firsthand the impact of the faith community’s work
in global disease outbreaks,” Redfield said in his statement. “The same
compassion, counsel and care will be just as important as we confront
this new virus and as many Americans and others around the world
experience disruption in their daily lives.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are seen March 11, after testifying to the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington. (CNS photo/Joshua Roberts, Reuters)

He added, “The faith community has always stepped in to enhance response efforts where our public health and clinical settings lack the capacity or expertise to comfort patients, families and whole communities.”

Redfield came to prominence during the emergence of HIV/AIDS in the
early 1980s. As a military doctor serving at what was then the Walter
Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, he was the first to establish
that the disease was not limited to gay men. In 1996, he founded the
University of Maryland’s prestigious Institute of Human Virology in
Baltimore with his colleagues Dr. William Blattner and Dr. Robert Gallo.

“He has magnificent credentials in public health. He was the first to
develop a classification for AIDS and HIV, the Walter Reed
classification, and was published in New England Journal (of Medicine),”
Blattner said. “He spearheaded the development of treatment regimens
that were more reliable than the original treatments that were being
rolled out.”

Blattner said he and Redfield participated in one of the first
conferences on HIV/AIDS with St. John Paul II, then pope, in the late
1980s.

Blattner praised the CDC’s response to the coronavirus pandemic thus
far, saying the decision to ban travel from China, where the virus
originated, bought the country valuable time.

“Dr. Redfield was on top of this. I mean, as soon as there was a sniff of something going on, they were on it in terms of what was going on over there. And then rapidly started to develop strategies,” Blattner told the Catholic Review.

A test tube with a coronavirus label is seen in this illustration photo taken Jan. 29. (CNS photo/Dado Ruvic, Reuters)

He noted that the highly publicized problems with COVID-19 testing kits were an early setback, but he said the components are fairly sophisticated and viewed it as a short-term problem.

However, Redfield is not without controversy; many public health advocates questioned his appointment to the CDC in 2018.

Blattner attributed the opposition to politics. He said unlike many
scientists, Redfield is staunchly opposed to abortion and favors
abstinence over birth control measures such as condoms to stop sexually
transmitted infections such as HIV.

“Whenever you’re a high-profile person and you have a strong face and
you have strong political leanings that are pro-life and so on and so
forth, you are going to come under attack,” Blattner said.

Redfield joined other top health officials in pushing back against
some misleading information from congressional Republicans and President
Donald Trump.

On March 11 during a hearing on Capitol Hill, he publicly disagreed with some members of Congress and media personalities who have attempted to label COVID-19 as the “Chinese coronavirus.”

He also said physical borders such as a wall on the border between
the U.S. and Mexico would not stop the spread of the virus, which had
been implied by Trump in a recent Tweet.

Blattner, who also is a Catholic and is a parishioner of the
Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine in Florida, said faith in God has
grounded his and Redfield’s work

“I think that humility is an important gift that we’re given. And
when you’re dealing with this kind of situation, having humility helps
one to allow all of the gifted people to be able to be heard and to
bring their expertise to the table,” Blattner said.

— By Tim Swift, Catholic News Service. Swift is the social media coordinator for the Catholic Review and the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Catholic News Service, serving since 1920 as a news agency specializing in reporting religion, is the primary source of national and world news that appears in the U.S. Catholic press. It is also a leading source of news for Catholic print and broadcast media throughout the world.

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